Olga Kagan: Scalarity in the verbal domain

Abstract

A long-standing topic in the discussion of Slavic languages is the proper analysis of verbal prefixes. Verbal prefixes play a special role in the expression of grammatical aspect as well as in word formation. One of the more complex issues associated with verbal prefixes in the Slavic languages is that they seem to resist a systematic and uniform analysis. In her monograph, Olga Kagan proposes a unified analysis of Russian verbal prefixes. The overall goal of her book is, as she states (p. 21), “to provide a unified formal semantic analysis for individual prefixes as well as for the more general system that underlies verbal prefixation in Russian.” The analysis Kagan proposes is couched in degree semantics. A scalar approach to verbal prefixes in Slavic languages is not novel and goes back to Filip’s work on this topic (e.g., Filip 2000). Nevertheless, the extent to which Russian verbal prefixes are covered within this analysis is unique to Kagan’s work.